>> guest: i'm talking about my friend in ohio. c-span: i thought you were talking about the founder of aa. >> guest: the traditions of aa , we don't talk about aa. c-span: the name of the book is "sideswiped" lessons learned courtesy of the hit men of capitol hill. our guest has been bob ney former congressman from ohio. thank you. ..

>> well, first, i want to thank the new america foundation for having us. i am particular and very honored to be a moderator because up until now, this late date in my

career, no one's ever found my moderate enough in my views to be a moderators. [laughter] i'm really happy tonight, the first time i like to moderate a panel, and it's, obviously, a great honor to talk about this on the 50th anniversary, and, obviously, it's a book that has put this bark on the culture and it's a very, very rare book that makes the argument that it changed people's lives. it's under criticism for affecting a group of small people for not talking about working class women who had no choice but to work all along and not talking about people of other sexual preferences finding themselves askew or outside

conventional life. what i want to do today is talk about the ongoing power of the classic, and i recently taught this book to the undergrads at nyu who some of -- a couple here in the audience who did not ever hesitate to tell me if something is boring, irrelevant, misdated, longer worthy of their important attention. it was amazing to me that in this class, it changed the light, and the book spoke to them in really interesting ways, and so i want to talk about the new femme anymore -- feminine mystique and the old mystique whether it's repressed, and, you know, it's pretty complicated. we, obviously, live in a world that's so transformed by both this book and the movement that followed this that it's hard for

those of us, most of us in the room, who were born after this came out. it's hard for us to imagine those days at all, and i just think about the rapiddivity of change in my family -- with mom sitting here i have to bring it up -- my father said only ugly women became lawyers, and i group up in a world where my mother removed the palace that my grandfather gave me and told me the next morning saying it was lost. [laughter] you know, 1970 new york city, and my daughter, we watched obama-hillary clinton election, she was tiny, like five, and she said -- i said, you know, she was a big obama supporter, and i said, you know, wouldn't it be cool if there was a woman

president? she looked at me destainfully and said, mom, of course there's been a woman president. it was like amazing that it was in that short time that we went from ugly women to becoming lawyers to of course there's been a woman president in a 5-year-old girl. that said, it's very hard for those of us who grew up in the world in which our feminist class, you know, books are causing people to talk today have names like the end of men. we live in a world in which more women than men get college educations in which women are, for the first time, in the majority of the workplace and in the majority in manager positions. it's hard to look back into the other time. i was abstractly understanding things were different, we don't know or see and feel it, exactly. i interviewed the paris review, and she told me that when she was in college, she had not a

single woman professor, shockedded, astonished, and i know life is like that. for my first question, i was going to ask our two panelists who were alive when the feminist first -- [laughter] just describe, for a moment, one -- your experience when you first read the book, and is it overblown or exaggerated to say this this book changed people's lives? >> oh, i don't think there's any question. of course it changed people's live, and it's still changing people's lives. it is passed down through the cultures, and it was the greatest social revolution probably since the suffrages, and that movement took a hundred years. this movement will take a hundred years. we're only halfway through, and we have to count on younger ones to really push it along, but i remember reading this, the feminist mystique in my mor's

batroom, one of the few books she read, and it was not possible for her to move on it because, although she was a gifted singer, and she was quite attractive, a natural businesswoman, eager to work, but she lived in a suburban housewife role with two children, and my father refused to let her work because that would have suggested, as many men thought at the time, that he couldn't support his family. she was frustrated. she, you know, it was either valium or vodka that kept women going. it was nots until she was in her 50s, they were divorced, and she went to aa, met another man, and she became a businesswoman. she lost, you know, half her life. i thought i would be different, you know, certainly, saw that

that root was not the right one, and what happened to me? i married a mar who i loved, but he was going -- starting medical school, and so i thought, ah-ha, this is cool, i have to support us. i have an excuse to have a career. that was my strait ji. i was totally rejected by the other wives of medical students because i was such an odd ball wanting a career, you know, that's just so ballsy. we got divorced. having put hubby through before there was any sense of recognizing for that thing, i was a single mom. that changed my trajectory, and i was a feminist. at the time, i mean, i started the tribune, in the women's department, the only place to get a job as a woman's writer, and i had to sneak down the back

stairs and dare across to go to the dmv, the sitting room where women were not allowedded, to get in the office of the sunday magazine editor and pitch him a story, and, thereby, i developed a mentor who allowed me to, you know, move ahead. gloria, a little older than i and much more politically sophisticated, like, what did she do? take the job as a bunny to get a story, and that hung on her forever, but it was only clay who was starting the new york magazine where they were an editor for a long time, who had a mother as a journalist, and they really had no attitude about women. he thought they are talented, move them up. we paid them a little less. he actually not only fostered my career, but he gave gloria the first column written by a woman in politics, a political column

that lasted for many, many years, and then when she wanted to start the news, of course she couldn't raise money. who was going to give money to a woman who wanted to publish a magazine about, you know, women? clay said, this is a great magazine idea. iemg going -- let's put it inside the covers of new york, so he midwifed this building, a magazine, 30 pages inside new york magazine with the cover on the outside as well as the inside, and it sold out. it was a great exhibition of collaboration of a male mentor and female which we lost site of today thinking only women help women, but why not seek out a

sponsor already at the top. >> when you read this, you remember where you were, how it affected you? >> no, i don't remember where i was. i'm not sure i know exactly how it affected me, but i do know how everything became the forward effect again, and i can only say that there was no -- there were so few possibilities for women that we were expected to be married by 21 or 22. we were expected to raise children. we were not expected to do anything. we were not expected to make money, and we were not protected against what would happen if we were divorced or someone died. we had no resources to earn our own living, and the vulnerable led us to behave towards men as

if they were demagogues. some of them were, maybe, and some of them maybe not. when the feminist mystique came out, betty, who was betty herself, we have to remember this put into words what was in the people's hearts and couldn't have said, and she said it, and the effects across the country was like an electric shock, like somebody -- i don't think of anything else perhaps martin luther king, but i can't think of anything else that happened in my lifetime that actually felt together, marched, as

women, we had a voition, we were different, somebody had to pay attention to us, and it was overwhelming, which is what made me individual lant about barbie, but i remember -- i remember going to the brooklyn museum to see a dinner table with plates of all different -- dedicated to women throughout history who made contributions. now, i'm not judging this as a work of art. that's not my feel. i can tell you i was there with katie and her younger sister, and i felt as if the world was turning. we were going to do this thing, and we may have thought it was simple leer than it turned out to be. i may not have anticipated what happened if you had three children, a corporate lawyer job. there were a lot of things we didn't figure out completely,

but the exhilaration of it, the extraordinariness, i just want to say one more thing, and i'll stop. i -- i took a writing class at sarah lawrence. the year was 1956. the professor who was a poet, it was an all-girl school, sat around the table, and read the paper. a woman went to reno to get a divorce, and you had to live there for six weeks, and she came back with a detailed report of everything that happened in the six weeks in reno. he said, what makes you think

anybody would be interested in the divorce? there was this silence, you know, because i couldn't have been the only one visited by this. [laughter] there was also the possibility women can't write because we adopt have subjects. what would my subject be? what would i do? i was not in a war, and, you know, the sense we were pushedded aside, and, yes, there was lessons, and heard it a hundred times, but the voices that everybody has now, the voices that i really believed they liberated into our world are so many and so amazing and so grateful i lived to see it

happen. [applause] >> i was going to say to everyone given how radically this transformation occurred and just when you think about it in terms of, you know, the history of social changes, how rapidly the change occurred, how unbelievably fast the world transformedded so we went from the feminine mistake that took place to, you know, the idea of a woman working is so subversive and transgressive to where we are now, ect., ect., and we can say there's all kinds of problems, to be addressed, but, certainly, in terms of opportunity, women have a kind of opportunity that could not be imagined in 1963 when they sat to write the book. >> right.

>> so i want to talk about whether weave -- we've cast aside the feminine mistake, and have we given up this kind of romantic notion, which now we call the stay at home mother, have we given up thed idea of family, this kind of all of that, the fantasy of what conventional life is like and what motherhood is. do you think we walked from that? we don't read this and recognize that. >> i don't think we've walkedded away from that. i mean, something that interests me when we talk about this is that, i mean, it's so exciting to hear you talk about we really thought we could do this because you bloody well did. i mean, you know, listen, when you started talking about, oh, you know, hear all the things that changed, what we couldn't do then, and now her daughter's asking her, of course, there's a woman president, but what i think is remarkable, i mean, the

single most striking thing to me looking at the book now was that this notion of we don't appreciate the change were the notions people had when they wrote the book. that blew my mind saying, you know, spent the first half fighting for rights and second half not appreciating them. that quote i wrote down is rights have a dull sound to people who grew up after they have been won. this is exactly our reaction now, of course. i think the question is related to that because i think that we have won all the right, and i think there's a feminist now, do everything, and this is not their opportunity that feminism enabled, but the fact of the matter is you can want do every single thing, and -- >> at the same time. >> yeah, at the same time.

>> it's the feminine fallacy. >> yeah, i mean, it can't be done. i don't think we've given up the idea at all of families or of motherhood, and i think all we've done is said we can do it all at once. >> i'm glad we have not given up. it's not a fantasy to have a family. it's a wonderful thing. >> yeah. >> and i think the vast majority of women do want to have a family. >> yeah. >> at some point. also, of educated women, something like 40% of women don't have children by the age of 40 which is pretty dramatic, but we had attachment parenting that came up in the last decade where women were encouraged to, you know, really be, very, very close to the children for at

least the first five years, and interestingly, even studies that have been done about women who once they were educated to the idea that if you really drop out, go off ramp as was put it, if you go off ramp, to have children, be home with them, you won't get back on where you left off, and you will pay in all kinds of ways, seniority positions and pensions. women are choosing to do that, majority of women are choosing a nonlinier path and taking some time out. the great encouragement is to stay connected in some way and/or become an entrepreneur to work from home, which is really -- >> not everybody has that skill set. >> that's true. >> that's true. >> that's true. >> look, i think we may have

forgotten that after this was published, we had a war, and within -- i won't even call it the feminist movement, but within and between women who made different choices, and i -- i mean, i have to say we better not glorify this. there was real nastiness going on between the women who had jobs, working for careers, felt themselves infin nitly better or felt threatened by the women baking cookies. those baking were livid and so put down and humiliated but those climbing up the ladder, and it was extremely unpleasant. >> that cookie baking never lost the punch; right? that's what hillary clinton said as first lady. i could have baked cookie, and people were appalled. >> i just want to read a quote

from this which shows how it was, and as women moved into the workplace, and there was another -- a woman faces on the way out of the house trapped in the hostility of other housewives. >> now, betty, over and over again said that she was for choice. >> right. >> she did not say you need to be free to choose the kind of life that you want which including work or it may not. she was not -- it was just not kind to the housewife staying home. i think that politically she saw quickly you cannot dismiss many, many hundreds of thousands of people's life choices.

you have to respect them, and you have to make it possible for them to feel pride in themselves or they will come and kill you. [laughter] i really think that's true. >> you don't want to be denigrating. i don't think it's in feminism's interest or interest of reality to be denigrating how difficult child caring is. that's work. >> you know, i'm very encouraged by the feminist spirit among millennials, young women. they really have it, way -- a lot of them. one of the things that i found interesting is a woman quite well-known now, who is a co-president of a company, melody thompson, who started out at 22, joining the only black owned investment firm in the country, and she was identified right away by the president as being a version of great talent and promise, and when she was

24, he took her to meet one of the biggest ceos in the country in the investment business saying, i'm grooming you to be president, and she then elected to be his grasshopper, jumped whenever he spoke, did everything he could want, including writing thank you notes to the parents of his children's sleepovers. at 28, he made her president. she was completely career oriented up until her mid-#30s when she said, gee, it would be nice to have a date or meet men, and she went out with, you know, someone fairly prominent, the filmmaker of "star wars," and they are engaged, she's 43. she'll probably never have children because she never had the time.

what she says about young women who come to be mentored is if they talk about work-life balance, she knows they will never move up to senior positions. in her firm or any other. they will have to unidirectional for ten years of the career. a lot of women don't find that appealing to, you know, also be a ceo where you have to give 110% of your time for that. for those who are aspiring to that, more power to them, and i hope we get more and more of them, but it is really a narrow portion of, i think, the female population that finds that appealing, don't you agree? >> that's because we only have half of a revolution. if we had actually changed the world and changed min, we would have the world that makes it possible. what we have is half, and we're not satisfied with half, and

half is not going to work. >> right. >> i think it's not because the failure is not permanent. it's something that is happening now because we have not changed the whole society. all we did is change what women want, and now we have to change what men want, and now we have to change what society is willing to do for a family so, for instance, universal day care. we have to make this world completely different for ourselves, and then -- >> i think that's such an important point. one of the things that makes me so sad is that we were really close, that 1971 thing that walter mondale pushed that was bipartisan, comprehensive child care -- where they were going to have universal, you know, preschool and day care like they do, and in scandinavian countries, and nixon vetoed that saying we don't want the vast moral authority of a vast government between a nontraditional family structure which made a messy life,

unconventional, what was written about, and that would have changed so much, still would, i think, that that would change so much. >> well, just paid maternity leave. >> of six weeks. >> that would be nice too. >> it's going to have to come through private companies because the government is not going to be able to do it. government can't pay for entitlements it already has out there. we can't march on washington, but work on companies. >> i think there's enough pressure if young women, you know, coalesce in a new movement towards that, that can happen. google just expanded -- google in new york, expanded to 12 weeks, i think, 12 weeks paid maternity leave because they had too many women leaving. well, duh, you know, that's what happens. [laughter] once they got -- they've improved their retention rate,

and it's paying off for them. >> there are women ceos who stepped forward, and, obviously, notably sandberg, and she's really perceived, i think, as astonishing announcement of visit -- visit rail. we want more women ceos, but the same people who say that hate the women ceos we have. we look at them, and we really can't stand a million things about them, and it's worthying a little bit about why, and some of the critiques are interesting because she is trying to use some of the things that we think about, you know, this next stage

of the revolution, and, she is trying to succeed in a high level business structure while in the sacrificing family, and kind of to a great deal of anger from women critics from feminists, from lots of nice thinking liberals. i'm curious what you make of that, her effort, and the kind of hostility to her in trying to think a way through this thorny problem. >> it's so inconceivable to me working in a job like that. i can't relate to it at all. everyone here, can anyone relate to having that kind of corporate job?

i have no idea what it entiles. i don't know what it means. [laughter] >> what did she get? >> built a nursery. >> that's the other one. >> fixing them up. >> [inaudible] >> there's a book about leaning in, talking about how women shouldn't leave the workplace before they leave the workplace, how they speak honestly. there's a lot of practical advice that's pretty much a very -- it's not a lofty betty tone in spite of the critiques, but nuts and bolts way, goes home at 5:30. people attack her because she has this privilege, and she is, obviously, very rich. begin, i think, a weird thing to attack a very successful ceo for. >> it's kind of the same thing as what, and they are valid,

what a lot of the criticisms were, this is a white privileged, well-educated elite situation. that's true. that's a valid critique of the book and valid to say, well, you're the ceo, there's the power to say, guess what i'm leaving at 5:30? on the other hand, elites are elite, and they have power. if someone in an elite position are putting things in a good direction, that's not so bad. >> it's not reproducible, though. that's what, i think, is the beef. it does make many women who are struggling terribly to try to figure out the balance, to be fair, to actually go through that terrible baby hunger that women feel at six months when they are unpaid maternity leave is over, and they have to go back to work because they have to work, and they don't want to leave their child. i mean, that is a reality for most women who have children and a good job. they don't get to go home at

5:30 to have supper with their kids. forget it, if they are going to move up. i think it's natural antipathy to having a book say, well, you are not working hard enough. figure it out, girls. >> i don't think that's a fair representation at all of what was said in the book, i have to say. >> there was a great piece on newyorker.com that those who criticize the book have not read the book. i think that she is not quite saying women are not working hard enough. i don't think -- i think that's an unfair dislation. i don't know if you read it, but i think it's unfair of what she is says. >> there was a writer, i don't know if you remember lois gould, and she said that in this culture, if someone raises their head out of general luck, takes a deep breath, and says something, someone on the shore will throw a rock at that head.

[laughter] that was pure lois, but it's completely true. there's a hostility of women towards women that i think we have not begun to deal with, and as any woman who says anything slightly at a variance from what the dogma says you should say like katie, will get viciously attacked by another set of women and could be the other -- i mean, it's not a question of one right side and one wrong side. i'm not saying that. i'm just saying that the urge to attack is very strong, and i don't know what we do about it. i don't know how we can cut it county, and i certainly don't want a sticky sentimentsal we all love each other and tell each other how good we all are. that is not doing it. it's something about how social

movements, any kind of movement, anything that moves, is going to attack. it's going to get attacked. it is. >> that's right. that's retelling one of the things that happened is in representing the position, the way we view her, there was two prominent journalists who really irresponsibly quoted a quotation of her, and one was on the front page of the times, the other doud, who said something i'm paraphrasing that i run a social movement, and they stopped the quote there, but the long quote, which was boring, was, like, mainly, like, working for a nonprofit or something, and by taking that first part of the quote, it makes it sounds like she's got these grand visions and aspirations of life and wants to be gone or betty, and, of course, people pounce and mock her, and it's one telling that quite well thought of

journalist of the "new york times" does something so borderline unethical to the extent that the times printed a correction because it's wrong to misquote somebody like that, but it's also telling that let's just say if she had said the original quote, i want to run a social movement, should we all take out guns and shoot her? this is like what mom is saying, and i feel for a woman to have a grand vision or grand idea automatically causes a lot of anxiety and anger and hostility. >> yeah. >> i only point out that speaking of women who were not, you know, were all in love, one big cuddle bug, betty was a piece of work. lesbians were a lavender menace to the movement and warned against the man hating, bra burning part of the movement. shefsz not somebody who said, oh, if you're a feminist, you're

fine with me. >> right. >> well, wait a minute. you're distorting history just a little bit. >> fix me up. >> all right. [laughter] >> there was a group within the feminist movement that was -- that disapproved of the family side of the feminist movement so that they got to be a lot of hostility. betty, on her book tour for i don't remember which one of her books, was greeted at various libraries by not only tickets, but bomb threats, and they did not come from some, you know, bearded pakistani terrorist, but they came from, you know, some women's groups that were very, very angry at her, and so that this is, you know, we really have to remember that i don't -- i don't believe -- i don't know who started that fight. it is true that betty was not a woman's woman.

if there was a room full of ten women and there was one man over in the corner, betty would go to the corner to talk to that man. that was part of her charm. [laughter] that is what i'm -- when i really think we -- was that there was a -- for a while, fortunately, died down, but it looked as if it could explode the whole movement completely. >> yes. >> that's right. >> and, you know, for those of us who were there, it was not a matter of the lesbians are wrong, the family women are right, or anything of the sort. it was what are you doing to our movement? >> yes. >> there was another part to that. there was the man haters. there really are were a lot of man haters, given the name "the ball busters," the strident ball busting, man hating women, and the movement got that wrap in

the mainstream, and it was very threatening. i was not a femme initial until 1970, and either did gloria because i didn't want to be a part of that, and i was scared that my, you know, the man i loved would think i was. i mean, i went on the marchs, and i, you know, did the things, but i had a real struggle between -- i don't want to give up the loving, compassionate, nurturing, sexy, man loving side of myself to be part of this movement. do i have to? that was a real struggle for many of us. >> this is such a funny line -- i can't remember if it's in the book or if she said it in an interview, that that people -- some women or some people read her as saying, you know, join the revolution, all you have to lose is your man. she said, no, all you have to lose is your vacuum cleaner. >> fab deny u --

fabulous marketing; right? >> i want to think a little bit more about how we can identify our own problems which have no name and our own feminine mystiques, which, by definition, are hard to recognize living in a culture. how do you talk about it? i want to think a little bit about that. one of my amazing undergraduate students said it's like we have that feminine mystique with new other stuff, both of them. that speaks to having it all question we talked about earlier. the french feminist wrote a book called "the conflict," talking about our new style of parenting. she called it "the child is king," in ways in which we parent which are taking this ominous amounts of energy that could be spent on, perhaps, like, other more fulfilling intellectual pursuits. what do you think are new feminine mystiques, new problems

that don't have a name? >> i think it's so funny that's coming from a french women, and you have bringing up bebe, a giant best seller by a woman who says if we are like the french and not make the kids into kings, but, anyway, i mean, the -- i don't -- i don't think this is the most important problem, but it is, i do think, i do think it's a misconception to some extent that the kind of pornification of the culture means we're sexually liberated. i think that's a myth. it's not the most important thing, but i think it's a myth. >> i think -- we did a whole book about the interview with young women about, okay, why are you flashing for girls gone wild? why are you, before you're -- before you've -- when you have not experienced sexual desire, why do you think it's your responsibility to look as skanky as possible as one girl said to

me. i think that there's confusion about the difference between -- and there's confusion because it's confusing, the difference between fulfilling a new role, the angel in the house, and being totally, sexually liberated, and i think it's confusing, and it was another issue confusing talking about what caused the infighting. sex and porn was pretty fractious. >> we didn't have porn then. >> yes, we did. we had many demonstrations against it -- >> that's right, we did, yes. >> hustler against hustler. >> i'm not clear why this is a -- why this is a feminist issue that divides young women that -- i don't understand what you said. this thing that -- >> okay, so i think that, you know, first of all, i'm starting from the assumption there was

such a thing as antiporn feminists who were, you know, arguing against that, and so-called prosex or sex positive is what it was changed to, feminists who thought it was about freedom, choice, and if they want to participate in pornography or watch it or, you know, sell it, that's choice; right? that's where this is starting. i think that no american -- i mean, i think that antiporn feminism failed about as spectacularly as the shakers. look at the culture now. you cannot say it's less porn mid than it was then. there was a confusion about women came so far they are free to express themselves, living in a sexually liberated world, or does it mean we internalized our obligation to be sex objects to a different extent? it's a confusing question. >> uh-huh. >> i'm just wondering whether, you know, we wouldn't want to rephrase that as the puritan

effect on our culture which still rages no matter what we do, and i, you know, i don't see this precisely as a feminist issue because, surely, it affects, you know, our mates and sons equally. how can -- >> the feminine mystique saying to the new men too; right? >> whomever is paying, but -- [laughter] the one she was waiting for. look, i -- it's just that the sex issue, which i imagine every generation struggles with in a slightly different, you know, slightly different name to it, but i would be happy if we were able to solve the question of, you know, how do you get -- how can a woman get through her work

life and her family life without losing her mind. if we solve that problem, that would be wonderful. then we go to what can we do about horny, human nature? that, you know, i think is an under problem. >> well, i want to ask one last question, and then, obviously, there's much to talk about with this book, sort of, again, amazing to just that it's a 50-year-old book, but i want to ask one question about broad broadening out. she had serious political ideas, but she was not expressing overtly. we talk about the countries, calling it, quote, studied resistance to political ideas, which betty was aware of, and at some level, she was critiquing a lonely crowd america, critiquing this ideal life that was not

just about women, but men, that everybody living in this commuter culture trying to get these things and accumulate them and live these conventional lives, and i think that's what i'm wondering what she makes of our world now because i think that if we think of betty and sub texts to the book, i wonder if she makes of our dream of conventional, and you can speak more about it, but our idea of a successful family life. it's narrow in this country. not that different than what it was in 1965 #. do any of you have any -- >> well, it's very different because both men and women spend much more time preparing themselves educationally and occupationally, postponing until late 20s, early 30s. it's a ten year jump from when ann and i were young, women

married at 21, men at 23. now it's more late 28 or -- for highly aspirational women who may be mid-30s, late 30s, 40s, having children, reproductive revolution that allowed people to postpone that was fantastic. we are in an entirely different economic situation. you know, we are somewhat, some say, a declining country economically, and the job opportunities for young women coming into this, you know, long recession, are so -- so truncated, that one of the good things i see now women aware of this, having worked through college, and if they pay for their own college and graduate school, they come out, mid to lit 20s with 200,000 college loans to pay off. wanting to be a social entrepreneur which some do, they

can't do. they have to take a job in some high paying positions, and if they went to law school, they are going to go into corporate law, boredded to tears with that, but they have to do it for five to ten years to get the money to then be able to do their passion. that's a big difference. you know, when i wrote passages in the 1970s, the most famous business book, and it remains to today is what color is your parachute? the thesis there is start out following your passion. who can afford to do that as a 25-year-old who finished college? they have to work, gain, get some, you know, it takes a decade to pay off the college loans for most people unless they came from a wealthy family. i think there's -- the other thing that's a big advantage is the boomer generation, which was the generation that inherited

the -- we started it, a little older, inherited the feminist revolution and moved it forward, 80% white. the generation of young people today, thank goodness, is far more diversified, and there are a lot of young african-american, asian-american, indian-american, hispanics who voted for obama who are very much responsible for the reelection of obama, and who are helping to mentor younger poor women which were left out of the first feminist revolution. poor women, we really didn't have a lot to do for them or even lower middle class women. there was a lot of intention about it, but they didn't get included a lot. neither did women of color, but now it's horizontal in that way, and what i find exciting is young women starting at, like,

18 and 22 to help younger poor women to learn code, learn how to do code, learn how to build websites, learn a skill that's like the typing of the past that allows them to get in low level positions and move up because they know the technology of the future. >> betty undoubtedly was, would have been austerized and killed. there's no way she could have expressed anything that could have been principled to a marxist position in any book that was going to be read by -- >> no, of course, but i'm saying look at her class critique then and apply it to now? >> yeah, i -- >> would she look at the culture now saying we are into small, material things, not reading vacuum cleaner ads, still --

>> well, wait a minute -- >> telling us how to live. >> that's probably all true, but if you are going to use the word "marxist," remember what happened in the whole country is we saw what marxism brought in russia, and having seen what that brought in russia, the word becomes a dirty word, and the idea is not good either, so what now happens is that, you know, i think we are in a very imperfect world, but it's a perfect, imperfect world without ideologies that we can hang on to, so i imagine most people here are not sitting around having coffee, fighting over ideologies. you may be fighting over various sorts of things you want to accomplish, disagree with political disagreements, you know, trying to find out what's going on in your world, but you are not sure this is the answer. that's the thing that changed enormously, i think. >> i think we should open it up

for questions. yeah. either to anyone or everyone or whatever you -- >> hi, i'm -- okay. i just want to make a comment. i was at a panel at nyu about women in the law, and it was nyu's first annual conference on women in the law, and, actually, i'll have to admit the reason i was there is because my mother was a speaker. she was past president of the national association of women lawyers, and she started an annual survey. she was first a cosh yowlings, and growing up, she was told she had to be a teacher, that basically at the age of 40, graduated from law school, and ended up going and was a major partner in two major law firms, and then she always felt upset by what she saw and how the treatment of women in law firms and even though she rose to be a managing partner of a major law firm, she started a survey, an annual survey of national law firms across the country, and

what she found is 15% of women today in 2013 make equity partner across the board in just her annual survey about roughly 15% of women are able to make equity partner in the law firms across the country was the statistic they found, and that's actually really sad, and, you know, someone got up in the audience saying, realm, you know, a lot of times women want to leave and climb the himalayas or look atmy shelly obama, and she was associating the law firm, saying, you know, people leave our law firm to do great things. well, you know, that's not really the point is you can climb the himalayas and leave the law firm, but the question, i think, that we have to focus on is why are they leaving the law firms? you know, but what is it about the structure about the law firms in not allowing women to advance to become equity

partners. there's plenty of associates in law firms for five years and basically forced to leave in one way or another, so i just wanted to ask you, the question is, i guess, you know, what structurally, what needs to happen concretely in america's workplaces? >> i'm not a lawyer. >> i mean, i would have to address, you know, law firm, and betty writes about working for fulfillment, and what's complicated, many don't work for fulfillment, and i think a lot of people working in law firms, trying tore partners in particular may not be working for full fulfillment, and that sometimes, and i think that is -- i'm not trying to stave the himalaya question, but i wonder if this model she has where the educated women should be using their brains in some way, i think there is something

in law firm culture for both men and women that's distorted and punishing. i think the question of whether you can have a life outside of the law firm for either a man or women, if you're a young man at 34 and you have a newborn baby, like, are you ever going to see that newborn baby? i mean, you know, i think for both men and women, it's a pretty difficult punishing culture, and our obsession with work and need to work all the time, and the way we work, role work occupies in our life for most men and women is complicated right now in our culture. >> the nightingale school about 15 years ago, an all-girl school, had a career day. they invited a corporate lawyer/partner, the mother of a child in the school, to come and speak, and she came, and she spoke, and she talked about all the wonderful things she did as partner, and then there was a question period. these were girls between 14 and

18. first question was, what time do you get home for dinner? second question was, what happens if your child is sick? the third question was, how often do you spend the whole weekend with your child? not one of these girls asked this woman a thing about the law or law firm or her political beliefs or corporate belief, so that the pressure on women who are corporate lawyers is enormous because underneath them, the generation that they're raising are complaining, and with justification, perhaps, and what are we going to do? something needs to be done, but it's not so simple. we can't say just make everybody, you know, let them have a root to success in the law firm equal because it's not going to work. >> uh-huh. i just want to point out we're

talking about working for fulfillment, law firms, betty living in a culture where women couldn't have careers. they write about how in 1960 there was as many women, vast majority married, working, as there were at the height of world war ii when aural the men were away and women had the jobs. what that tells you is it's not that women didn't work when she wrote the book, but women didn't work for fulfillment. plenty of women had to work. >> yeah. >> and did. >> yeah. question? >> >> i'm in grad school for history, the privilege of teaching the book and talking to the students about it, and i guess my first question is whether you think that today there's been sort of -- this is true of my friends, my peers, there's a backlash, the idea that staying at home or being a stay at home mom, that's a

bierty word too, and it's not something that anyone should entertain as a goal or an aspiration, and then on the other side of it, when i talk about the book or about other feminist text, i had students preface what they say, saying, i'm by no means a feminist, and so i wonder whether you still think there's this, like, stigma with the word "feminist," and what we can do to fix that. >> i would say maybe we shouldn't fix it. i'm going to say, i mean, look at most recently, i mean, people say, oh, taylor swift doesn't consider herself a feminist. marissa mary doesn't consider herself a feminist. "the end of men" argues that maybe the fact she doesn't consider herself a feminist means the term is no longer useful to us. it doesn't mean she's not a feminist. she, obviously, believes many of the things that we think of, and just what you talk about the students who believe all the feminist things, so should we

keep trying to make people wear a sign i'm a feminist or just view the fact that we may not need the word as a sign of success of the movement. is it a sign of the tremendous success of betty and the women who went on the marchs, and gayle went on, is it a sign of succeeding that we don't need that word anymore? that these ideas have been so assimilated into our dna that we may not need it anymore. that's just my idea. >> i think we could call ourselves women's advocates. you know, it's a much more neutral term. i think the, you know, firm nighses became a dirty word among gen x, not millennials, but among your student, and we do have to get away from that in order to -- but you do need a name. you have to have a brand. what's our brand? we're women advocates, activists, we're, you know, still want to see -- help women

understand how to succeed in their lives, in life. we need -- we need to do that. we need help. >> i wish i knew. >> i wish i knew too. >> just to the point of what you were saying, gloria told me, and this is a gloria thing, just she was saying how that this woman was telling -- was bemoaning how her kids, daughter call herself a feminist, and gloria said, yes, you know who she is, and, i mean, i think that that's like, you know, if you're daughter's saying to you, there's been a woman president, she doesn't know gloria, doesn't say i'm a feminist, you know, it's -- there's more than one way to look at that. ..

actually change the values of the workplace so men and women could have it all and that hasn't really come up here. i don't know that was in "the feminine mystique" but it was certainly in future books and what i learned growing up. women now, if they want to have it all they do it by somehow navigating their work place and designing their own solution and it might be that lateral track and not the direct upward track.

she always advocated that we shouldn't have to do that. we should have silo structures that do that for us. that was one thing about the work they send the other thing is that betty friedan was not a marxist and that is not a proven fact. and it's very upsetting to hear it be given as that but i like most of what you said otherwise. she had a profound sense of social justice center profound sense of social justice was informed by many things including her upbringing and where she grew up and many many things. in the 40s she grew up studying intellectual things in college and she certainly played with leftist ideas and everything. did anybody see the way we were quite anybody who was intelligent at that time -- she would be what we would say a limousine communist. >> the word marxist has certain

residences to older people and what they mean by that was she had a strongly developed class consciousness and she thought more seriously about class in a more rigorous way then in the book. when you say limousine communist maybe that's a better way to talk about it. do we have time for one more question? one more question. >> make it a good one. >> this is more of a comment based upon the last thing with identifying as a feminist and i feel like it actually has to do a lot with what gloria writes in her book. there is this sort of hesitation to you now stand up for yourself in a sense because you don't want to be about women. especially in a class that is reading "the feminine mystique" and the person says something very feminist a refusal to identify as a feminist in that

sense shows there is this extreme backlash in our culture that still exists. did you see the oscars? to say that we are beyond the word feminism is maybe wishful thinking and lovely but i don't think it's actually true. that's all. [applause] >> thanks everyone. [applause]

>> that is the opening of thanksgiving day of the 22nd annual sale. >> this house will always grow and should create it seems to be such a shame we came here to find hardly anything from the past in the house. hardly anything before 1902. i know we went to columbia. the presidential palace there has always -- every piece of furniture and it has some link with the past. i think the white house should be like that. >> our message was this. as mothers we are concerned.

as first ladies we are committed and as citizens of the world we pledge to do all that is possible to stop the scourge. and it >> in june 1963 president john at kennedy and made his speech. former u.s. diplomat w.r. smyser writes about the speech in his book "kennedy and the berlin wall". the author discussed president kennedy's war diplomacy at the woodrow wilson center in washington d.c.. this is an hour and a half. >> welcome everybody to the woodrow wilson center for the

launch of the "kennedy and the berlin wall." a hell of a lot better than a war by william smyser. it is certainly one of the most readable books on the history of the berlin wall and the major confrontation between khrushchev and the united states and the soviet union in the late 50's and the early 60's and i'm sure we will have 90 highly interesting minutes of talk and discussion together. my name is bernd schaefer and i'm a senior scholar and a former fellow at the historical institute. i'm very pleased to have an outstanding panel here today. we will start with mr. smyser who will talk about his book, the major points of his book for 30 minutes followed by comments. i will introduce our commentator at that time and mr. smyser will have the chance to respond

briefly to the comments and then we will open it up to the audience and hope we have a lively question and answer session afterwards. so mr. smyser is currently the henry alford kissinger scholar in the sean w. lucre center and is teaching at the bmw for german studies at georgetown university. he has an outstanding career in public service and you can find it in his book a lot of details about his career. during the berlin crisis he was in berlin. he got a lot of insights which you will be introduced to in this book. he also served later in the white house with henry kissinger and the national security council. he was a specialist on vietnam and other parts of the world. he has an outstanding career and

biography. today he will talk about his book which has the close connection to the wilson center because he wrote major parts of this book when he was a public policy scholar at the wilson center so in some ways it's a wilson center book and we are very proud of the final product. it's a very engrossing reading i can tell all of you. i look forward to have -- having him talk about his book for 30 minutes and i will introduce the two commentators. >> thank you very much mr. shafer. on january 19, 1961 it was a snowy day in washington. president-elect john f. kennedy and some members of his cabinet went to the white house to meet with outgoing president dwight eisenhower. eisenhower was to brief them on foreign affairs as with secretary of state christian --

they did that and eisenhower said privately to kennedy berlin is a place that worries me. i think we are going to have a crisis there. we have managed to postpone it but it's going to come up probably pretty quickly. christian hood or the secretary of state briefed him on how khrushchev in 1958 issued an ultimatum that we would all agree to sign the peace treaty for germany within six months. if they did not do that he would sign a private treaty just with the east german party boss in the tater and then after that the allies would have to get their rights from -- at that point they would no longer be able to fly in the quarters the way they have been flying. they would no longer be able to go back and forth to berlin on a special privilege. they would no longer be able to take their special trains.

khrushchev had a menace and eisenhower warned kennedy that there were many signs that khrushchev would in fact act on it. i will not go into details of the whole story because it's in the book and i urge you of course to read it but i will talk here about four things. the vienna senate june third and fourth 1961 between khrushchev and kennedy checkpoint charlie confrontation october 1961 and the connection between the cuban missile crisis and berlin in october 1962. when kennedy became president january 20 the day after he met with eisenhower he stepped his white house with the people who everybody called the best and the brightest to george bundy who had in dean of faculty of harvard university and the scholar of everything at harvard university and a number of other

people. he also brought on board the best possible experts on the soviet union george tenant who he had known personally for quite some time chip bowl and ambassador who had served that moscow as kennan had and he also brought on board several other people whom he consulted from time to time like tommy thompson who was ambassador to moscow and assistant secretary for european affairs but also soviet hand. there was only one european hand who is in the senior levels of the white house and that -- he found it rather frustrating. kissinger believed that once you look at berlin for a lens focused on western europe on west germany that the important thing to do was to protect berlin so as to maintain the allied position in germany.

but he found himself consistently frustrated even though he had some good meetings with kennedy. he could not get kennedy to agree with him and he finally left at the end of 1961. he resigned and the left with a memo to schlesinger in which he said quote i am in the position of a man sitting next to a driver who is heading for a precipice and the driver is asking him to make sure that the tires are properly inflated and that the oil pressure is adequate. that was not what kissinger wanted us to roll. he felt that kennedy was heading for a disaster and he wanted to make sure that he could not make a contribution. khrushchev made nice to kennedy. he was delighted that kennedy became president. he hated nixon. he was so glad that kennedy won and within a few weeks of kennedy's victory even before

kennedy became president khrushchev sent the word through some american journalists and also through some soviets that he wanted to have a good relationship with kennedy and that he looked forward to it. kennedy and response had a meeting with the soviet experts and in february sent a memo -- excuse me a letter to khrushchev indicating that he hoped they would have an early meeting. khrushchev sat on the invitation he had had intelligence reports that the united states was going to attack cuba. he alerted castro and told him what to expect and then he decided to sit and wait. as you know the american invasion took place. it was the bay of pigs. actually was a group of cuban exiles whom the americans landed and as you also know castro was ready and the cubans had to surrender and the whole thing was a disaster.

but what fascinated khrushchev was the kennedy let it be a disaster. he thought that kennedy would use some of those planes that were flying overhead or that he would use some of those ships cruising off the coast of cuba in order to man troops and in order to take over the islands that kennedy didn't do it. khrushchev said to his son sergei i don't understand kennedy. perhaps he blacks determination. and at that moment he changed his mind about kennedy. he decided that there was no sense talking to this man on an even basis because this man was weak. he called him a boy in short pants. khrushchev respected agent did not respect people who were too young and certainly did not respect people who did not at the way he would have acted. he was a fighter. if his friends were losing he

would do everything he could to make them win. kennedy did not do that and khrushchev decided that he was facing a weak american president. he was reinforced in his opinion by len shook off the soviet ambassador for washington and said -- excuse me who wrote to khrushchev that quote when there is a real crisis kennedy will drop a load in his pants. that is not a nice thing to say about the head of state to whom you are credited but that is what he believed and that was cruised -- what khrushchev was beginning to believe. khrushchev had a chance to test this theory in june 1961 when he and kennedy met in vietnam. but the kennedy preparation for the summit was a disaster. in fact as an officer i can tell you that i was shocked by some of the things i read in the kennedy library and what people

had sent to kennedy. ambassador tommy thompson who had been personally warned by khrushchev that he wanted to settle berlin and vienna and he was going to be hard on that circuit sent a cable to washington saying that khrushchev would glide over berlin. the state department said a memo to kennedy, a pre-meeting memo in which he said they were expecting a positive meeting and khrushchev would be prepared to delay on the berlin issue. only a soviet agent whom robert kennedy had befriended told the americans the truth. he told bobby that there would be a tough meeting and khrushchev was going to be hard on berlin. kennedy replied, bobby replied on this one the president is hard said. he is not going to pull out the troops. so bobby said to jack we are going to have trouble. but nobody else did. as it turned out they were

right. when the summit began kennedy began with two ideas. the first idea was to divide the world and particularly to divide europe. he said to khrushchev, and this is in the record, as far as i'm concerned you can maintain your position in east berlin and you can maintain your position in eastern europe. we want to maintain our position in western europe and we want to maintain our position in west berlin. khrushchev absolutely and totally rejected that. he said you cannot prevent the people from acting as they want to ask. then kennedy based on briefings briefings and wishing tim said to khrushchev you know, will have nuclear weapons now. we have to make sure we avoid miscalculation and we avoid getting into a war as people have gotten into it war in world war i. khrushchev blew up. he jumped up and he said i did not want to hear the word miscalculation again. what you are trying to do is to

tell the soviet people to sit on their hands like schoolboys. we will not do that. kennedy retreated and made a quiet promise that he would never use the word miscalculation again. but he had met the real khrushchev who is absolutely determined he was the future of communism. he was not going to sit down and let anybody talk about him. khrushchev warned at the end of the first day during which they talked mainly about laws and about arms control, that he wanted to settle berlin and he said we have only a have only half of the left and we have to talk about them. it didn't work out that way. what happened was that kennedy talked a little bit more about laos and arms control and talk a little bit more about everything and it was only when they were within an hour and a half and this was with translation so an hour and 45 minutes, not until then did they get onto the subject of berlin.

by then khrushchev who is by nature impatient and impulsive was beside himself. he said i have come to settle berlin. you have got to sign a peace treaty. if you don't sign a peace treaty at will sign the peace treaty with the gdr and at that point your rights will evaporate and you must settle with the gp are. kennedy reacted firmly. he said we are not talking about love. we are talking about something that we take much more seriously. khrushchev said he was going to sign the treaty within six months and he said there might be war and if there is war the burden would be shared equally on all sides. kennedy was unhappy and so after lunch he said let's have another final meeting even though we are not scheduled to have one. he tried again to say to khrushchev looked, berlin is a subject that is difficult for us. we cannot just do what we want.

we cannot pull out. khrushchev got even worse and got more impatient. he said i'm going to sign the treaty within six months. nothing will stop me. there will be war. kennedy was totally intimidated. all he could say was it will be a cold winter. a friend of mine who spoke with a journalist who had seen kennedy after the meeting and he said kennedy looked green, like a man who had all the blood drained from his face. it was a terrible moment for him. he met with scotty scotty reston for "new york times" reporter afterwards and he said i had never met a man with that. khrushchev felt just the opposite. he felt he had made his point and harry reiterated his view. he thought i god he could pressure kennedy into leaving berlin and could in fact pressured kennedy into almost everything else. he was very very tough. he briefs him and he said we are

going to get that peace treaty and things are going to change. i was by then at the u.s. mission in berlin. we had american journalists come by to brief us about what was going on. not formally but they told us what happened and we were very discouraged. we realize that kennedy had not really been able to deter khrushchev. the berliners were also discouraged in most of also where the east germans. the refugee rate from east germany into west berlin picked up to over 1000 people a day and on weekends 2500 a day. they decided they could not wait any longer. they had to get out. he said finally were going to do something about berlin and he said to khrushchev there are two things i want. one thing i want immediately is to stop the refugee flow in the other thing i want is a peace treaty. khrushchev said looked, these are very important decisions.

they are going to shape the future of europe. i cannot do it without first discussing it with the warsaw pact. at the beginning he called a meeting of the top people the top leaders of the world in moscow and he said, you make your proposal -- proposal. the warsaw pact leaders said looked, we agree you have to stop the refugees but you cannot have a peace treaty because the chancellor of west germany would impose an economic embargo and they cannot afford an economic embargo. mr. khrushchev is unprepared to support our economy and khrushchev said no i cannot do that. khrushchev gave group issued instructions to stop the refugee flow and he said to him not one millimeter more. then he sent marshall to berlin

to keep an eye on the situation and probably particularly to control mr. rubin should as well as watching the situation. on august 13, 1961 at 2:30 a.m. i got a phonecall and somebody said to me it was the duty officer at the mission. there something going on in east berlin. would he go take a look back site got into my car which was a 190 sl convertible. the best way to look at what is going on. i drove a and i didn't get duty reimbursement i should add. i drove at potsdam. i was stopped because there were east german locals putting barbed wire across the street. i said to them you cannot stop me. you have to let me through. i'm a member of the allied forces.

i have to be able to get through. they checked with an officer and the officer said yes you have to let him through. they pulled back the barbed wire and let me go into east berlin. i drove around east berlin for about 45 minutes. i have never seen so many armored cars. i also saw something i hadn't seen before. there were police all over the place and east german armies. i would see in the distance some things that look like soviet cars. of course we didn't see anything but nonetheless it was clear that this was an east east german operation and the soviets were watching. then i went to -- the principle route or at least one it was in those days to get from east to west. there i met a scene of utter desolation. there were people sitting on their suitcases and people sitting on makeshift bags. they were people weeping

absolutely disgusted that they could not get out. i went up to the train tracks as close as i could get, and it was clear that all the trains that came from east berlin to west were being stopped and turned around. i went back to the u.s. mission and i said, they are closing down the refugee camp in closing down east berlin. the missions sent a report to washington and met with the french and the british missions and they drafted a protest to make the soviets -- because this was a violation of rights. in washington everybody was totally calm. in hyannis port where president kennedy was spending the weekend he got a briefing from his man general ted christian who said to him we have a report from

berlin which says they are closing down the refugee camp. kennedy said a war is not very nice but it's a hell of a lot better than a war. i made this a subtext of my book because this was kennedy's attitude. he was terribly afraid that berlin would lead to a war. if khrushchev and -- could solve the refugee problem then maybe there would not be a war. the east germans have done us a favor which is not the way we saw it in berlin but this was the way we saw it in the white house and in washington. however that was not the way the american people saw it. the american people were upset. kennedy began getting little black umbrellas in the white house mail meaning that they thought that he was an appeaser like chamberlain. he began getting angry phonecalls. newspaper editorials said we cannot let this happen without a reaction so he realized he had

to do something. he called in a number of people including general lucius clay who had been a military governor of germany for four years from 1945 to 1949 who had been -- and he asked him what he should do. clay said what you should do is send a brigade into berlin in order to show you take this seriously and your rightful not be trampled. kennedy decided to call a meeting about this and about other things. and at that meeting clay gave his proposal. he was totally opposed to all all the soviet hands including chip boland. kennedy had to make a decision and the decision he made was to send the brigade. it was the first time he had gone against the advice of the

soviet experts. it was for him a real coming-out, a real shift in his attitude about a number of things. he also of course said lbj who made some nice speeches and the brigade got through. mona noffke the defense minister of the soviet union told khrushchev we should lock deprecating khrushchev said no. but khrushchev and his son, because this was a weekend, and he was not in his office, he watched -- not on television because he didn't have television but he watched reports on everything that's happening with that brigade. kennedy himself asked for a report every 20 minutes. both khrushchev and kennedy were worried about what would happen. they were both very relieved that the brigade came through.

it was the kind of thing which was a risk for kennedy but it worked. then kennedy decided she wanted to send him to berlin as personal representative. i was appointed to be his assistant which was in adjusting job and if we have more time later i can talk about it. but what clay wanted to do was to give the berliners a sense that the west in the united states in particular would not abandon them. he ran patrols up and down the autobahn. he ran patrols to the border. he took a flight and i accompanied him to pull out the refugee -- [inaudible] when we left in the helicopter with the refugee some of the locals turned their guns on us but we were perfectly calm because we knew they had no authority to shirt it -- shoot.

in fact they probably didn't have ammunition. in any case clay was doing the things that the boosted berlin morale and had an effect that clay had his opposition. in washington it was obviously the soviet hands. it was mac bundy himself who had many doubts about what clay was proposing. the military especially nato commander norse dad was very worried about it and the british including prime minister macmillan who once called clay is senile and bitter old man. pardon the redundancy but i think it says exactly what he felt about somebody who was going against the way he wanted. ..

>> they sent a squad of soldiers who, with their rifles in front of them, and walked in the dark several times in order to make the point that we were going to oppose this. they kept it up, and a couple of times in the next few days did the same thing. at the end of the week, decided he would try a test, so he put a few military in civilian clothes, and had them try check point charlie. they did, the same thing happened. by thursday of the week, there was a great recognition this was something the east germans would

try to keep up. clay already sent a cable to kennedy ten days earlier saying that kennedy should look out because the soviets were letting the soviets intimidate us and harass us while they were in the background. he said, i don't think we should let this happen. what i'm going try to do is bring the soviets out of hiding, and once, of course, they come out of hiding, i will pull back. it's important for them to show themselves. after the american car was turned back, he not only had to walk through the check point again, but then he sent ten tanks to an empty lot, lots of empty lots in those days, about two or three blocks from the check point. the soviet officer from the soviet mission walked around the tanks saying, you know, we have

tanks too, which i think we all knew, and low and behold, a couple hours later, ten tanks appeared at the check point. by then, we knew the soviets took control of the check point. they had definitely not let the east germans handle this situation. clay wanted to bring the soviet tanks out, so he instructed the tanks, our tanks to have a white line paints across the street. when they did that, the soviet tanks rumen out of the parks lot and face the american tanks about ten feet away or something like that, with gun pointed at each other. at that point, we relax, and the american operation center knew that the soviets were not going to start anything, and we knew that we were now okay. they got what they wanted, forced the soviets out, but, of

course, a press report spoke of impending war. they said here's the americans and soviets shooting each other. are they going to shoot each other? this is a very dangerous moment. several of the other white house advisers said to kennedy, look, pull back the tanks. we can't afford the risk of war over this. kennedy put his feet up on the desk in order to show that he was totally calm, and he called per lin. when clay said, hello, mr. president, the operation center fell dead silent. kennedy said to clay, what's going on? clay said, everything's fine. there's hundreds of tanks in the area. they only brought up ten. it's a sign they don't want any trouble. perfectly relaxed, the situation is under control. kennedy said, good, glad to know

that. he said, i hope you don't lose your nerves, and clay says, mr. president, we're not worried about our nerves. we're worried about the nerves of those in washington. kennedy said, people here lost their nerves, but i have not. those were, perhaps the most important words that kennedy has spoken in his presidency because it showed that he at least understood how you have to deal with certain types of situations, and that he recognized that sometimes you just had to bring up the tanks if the other people were going to be that way. i always believed that berlin was the best preparation that kennedy could have had for the cuban crisis. because of that. in any case, the next morning, soviet tanks pull back, explaning to the son that october 9th in berlin, you know, the soldiers can't take that, pulled them back, and, of course, within 20 minutes, clay

pulledded back. the check point confrontation was one of the most important moments in the history of berlin because it showed that the americans were ready to act when it was necessary. they didn't want a war either, but they wanted the americans to show they would not, and that was pleased. for the next few months, crisis came and crisis went. the soviets tried to make reservations in the air corridor so we couldn't fly through them, but we did. we flew through them including civilian planes. they wanted fighter aircrafts in the corridors in order to tell the soviets they were doing something which they shouldn't do. kennedy said no, but he had other things. it was a mixed relationship. sometimes kennedy support the clay. he supported him a lot more than anybody else in washington did. certainly, more than rusk and

bundy did, but sometimes he did not. strangely enough, everything calmed down by april. the reservations lifted up, and everything was quiet. we know now that there was a conversation about that time. they said, we simply don't have the power to make americans do what we want them to do. clay left berlin. before he left, he sent a cable to kennedy saying i think we are in a pause, but we are not at the end of this. there will be something more. i don't know what it will be, but there will be something that will happen. we must be ready for it. what happened next, of course, was cuba. in berlin, we first knew this was going to be a crisis because

the soviets began building pipelines, old pipelines from the polish border to the west german border and surroundings of the berlin. something that they did not do except in limited ways when they had maneuvers. we knew that they would fry to make a major show of force in berlin and wanted us to know it. a major show for it. at the same time, there was a cable sent to kennedy saying, you know, we really should, with the united nations, substitute united nations forces for allied forces, maybe 25% a year until at the end of four years, allies are totally out. kennedy reply, i'm not going to do that, but they went to the white house and said, you know, he's going to come in november to the united nations, going to make a speech there, and he wants to settle the problem. he was thinking that in berlin,

he knew it, but we didn't know what it was, and, of course, later, we found out, it was effort to put the missiles into cuba. now, all of you know what happened. no secret about that. kennedy forced them to pull the missiles out. crus chef said to his son -- that would be an excellent book -- that he expected kennedy to andnot rlized that kennedy was a different man in october 196 # 2 as he has been in june 1961. i'm just about to finish. with that, and with the end of the cuban crisis, the berlin crisis is over. they said to me, you know, this is it. nay are not going to do anything

more. interestingly enough, the next day after kennedy made his speech announcing that we would insist on the missiles to be withdrawn, the soviet forces began pulling back from the west german border. we always saw a connection. in any case, in november 1962 after the cuban missile crisis, i happened to be in new york, had drinks with general clay at the club, and he said, you know, if kennedy acted more toughly in berlin, they never would have been a cuban missile crisis. he expected that kennedy would accept the missiles, and, of course, kennedy couldn't do that. the end of the story, june 26th, 1963, kennedy comes to berlin, huge crowds, and he says something that does not mean i am a jelly donut, and we can talk about that if you'd like.

despite that -- thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you very much. we will have two comments, first, mary beth stein, and both about ten minutes long. mary beth is the professor of national affairs at the george washington university, and he has received numerous fellowships and scholarships dealing with various germany and experts on terms of east germans in literature and also on the

berlin law, and expert here today, and 11 years ago, we had the first panel, happy to be with you, and i look forward to your comments. thank you. whatever you want. >> it's one of the great paradoxes of history that the berlin wall was built august 13th, 1961 and torn down on november 9th, 1989 for the same reasons, to keep east germans from escaping the german democratic republic. the former event was carefully plannedded for on an early sunday morning in august with prior approval, and the war saw packed countries, the latter was literally the chaotic unraveling of a to therring regime. they had been told at the 40th

anniversary of the gdr a mere three or four weeks before the collapse that the soviets would not come to the aid and stance -- assistance of the east germans in trying to deal with their problem of the mass refugees, and the grows number of demonstrators in east german cities, and the political circumstances between 1961 and 1989 could not have been more different. there had been gradual, yet visible improvements over the years not only between the superpowers, but between the two german states thanks to a number of important milestones. there was politics about which i'll talk in a moment, the agreement between the four allies of the berlin, and the basic treaty between the two german states. yet, between 196 is and 1989, one crucial aspect remained the same. the lack of support of east

german population for the socialist union party. this, ultimately, is what drove the gdr government to build the wall and tear it down. there's a precise and engaging account of what's known as the second berlin crisis. the first of which was the berlin blockade and air lift. the second crisis was presip kateed by cruise ships ultimatum that west berlin be a free and mutual city. everyone understood what that met meaning the western allies should evacuate the city and soviets and gdr would move in. the crisis reached a climax with the close closing of the border, but did not end there. that's kennedy's visit to west berlin in 1963, merely two years after the building of the berlin wall. the bookends with the fall of the wall. the closing and opening of the border are the dramatic

bookends. the intervening chapters recount with fascinating detail the moves and countermoves of the western and soviet allies. the wartime alliance fractured beyond repair and ease caylating cold war. equally fascinating, in the accounts are diverging interests of the british and french and american leaders with the gull that pursuing their own national interests and european policies often at the cross purposes of the u.s. government. they had no love for germany and was an appeaser to soviet demand. they encouraged kennedy to adopt a strong position against the threats, but he was underminding kennedy by trying to appear as a soul supporter and maneuvering to keep british out of the european communities. the berlin wall effectively lower the temperature on a highly charged international situation.

professor's account effectively recreates the drama of the time, a drama that turns the key player knew or thought they knew and what has been discovered through arian -- archive material and additional research. before addressing political implications of the berlin wall, i want to dawn my cap as a professor of german, not to talk about the jelly roll and whether he said that. that, i think, was answered by the professor other others, but to talk about the narrative structure and perspective of the work. like most, the professor writes from the perspective of a narrator, and the historian whose cold from all available sources and written from the advantage of hindsight. however, there is an immediacy of perspective, and in the moment feelings when the author steps forward as the participant in an eyewitness to many of the very dramatic events and speaks

from personal experience as he guides robert kennedy around west berlin and more intriguingly, nixon is incognita in east berlin. i enjoyed that episode, and i hope there's chance to talk about that, and i assume there would have been many more such episodes that could have been included in the book. the immediacy and drama of the time is what was referred to as the book's readability, and it's captured in chapter titles, quotes from published accounts, archived material, and personal interviews between the author and key players. the authors and relations for general clay is clear in the admiration i share, but the opinion on or perspective about other key players and developments remained largely guarded. if i critique the book, which is admirable, i have to say that i would have liked more unique insider perspective. perhaps a single chapter devoted to his role or activities of the

u.s. mission throughout the crisis. this is the unique perspective that the author brings to a widely researched project. let me turn now to two of the key players to whom the professor had special access working for one and with the other. clay, represented both american and west berlin interests as was made clear. clay was the american world worr ii general and first hero of the first berlin crisis master minding the berlin air lift playing a role in preserving west berlin for a second time. as kennedy's personal representative, he gave the the president a radically different viewpoint from the state department and white house advisers. clay understood both the strategic and symbolic importance of berlin for germany and europe and believed berlin was an important -- was important for american influence in europe. he not only knew berlin and the

berliner's will, but learned from past experience how to deal with the soviet threat and understood what was needed to withstand east german and coach yet pressures which was, essentially, a tift for taft response to every east german provocation along the border or highway, a similar response by the americans. much to kennedy's disstress, clay was behind the showdown of tanks at check point charlie, the hottest moment in the cold war history of berlin. finally, and for the west berliners, probably most importantly, he encouragedded u.s. investment in west berlin at a time when many west berlin companies moved to west germany. most importantly, however, was the advice to kennedy that reflected both american and west berlin interests baited on a deep personal understanding to the will and temperament of the west berliners. they turned out in hundreds of thousands in 1963 to hear kennedy say, but in many pockets

of west berlin, particularly the exclave, it was clay who was the local hero, the winning of the hearts and minds after two long years of resentment of american's inactions. in the late 1980s, when i was living in west berlin doing research, i interviewed many people who had known clay, but they said with bitterness, while kennedy was off sailing in the crisis, clay was standing by us, and they recounted vivid and personal memories how clay had done so much to promote german american dproips with, quote, such as he was an elegant man or saved west berlin a second time. the unique perspective is

kennedy wouldn't not have had a west berlin to visit if not for clay's influence and impact on kennedy's decision making. what i had not known and learned from the professor's book was the strategic timing of kennedy's visit. i never knew why that date -- turns out, it was to preempt the visit to germany and undermind what the gall was doing in his european strategy based on a close, franco-german relationship. much has been written about kennedy's speech before hundreds of thousands, one of the finest moments, and they have gone down as one of the presidential great quotations of all time, and like lincoln's gettysburg address, kennedy's text was rewritten in the last moment, and in doing so, he pitched it perfectly, expressing the right sentiment at the right moment in time, and like lincoln's, kennedy's speech acquired an iconic status. second, i would like to talk

about billy, the agenting mayor of berlin at that time, and his subsequent politics becoming the federal chancellor of west germany. when he was chancellor of the federal public of west germany, his social democratic party embarked on a new course switching from a frame work based on a western alliance, the atlantic alliance, to maintaining a western alliance while improving relationships with the east, particularly, with the soviet union and the european states. through renunciation of force agreements. for bankrupt, it was rooted in two key factors,. the first was the less son he took away from 1961. he recounts in many of the memoirs that he'd written, the one i look at again in preparation for this talk was his autobiography, my life in politics, describing his frustration in dealing in the

lack of response by the western and, particularly, the u.s. come daunts when the border was closed. he describedded the mixture of fury and protests that his government was forced to deal with on its own. he writes, we should not expect others to find answers we had to find for ourselves, and we worked on a frame work to improve and remake the status between the two east german states. the second factor in the off politic was an indisputable conviction that germans belonged together. they believed east and west german leaders must rid themselves of allusions, intractable politic, and instead work towards practical solutions that could ease tension and human suffering. the salient feature was really the humanitarian dimension. the policy of small steps forlated by the adviser was

changed, continued confrontation felt would only deepen the division. he began by dropping language that had aggravated relations with the gdr, and in his inaugural address, he omitted the word "reunification," and reversed nonrecognition policy vis-a-vis the gdr. he was the first chancellor to refer to two german states, and initiate the first germany did not produce immediate results, but it laid the ground work for the later basic treaty between the two germanys. ironically, and i always found this interesting, their meeting reprized some of the basic die dynamics in effort of the offensive, demanding the de

facto recognition of the gdr and saying they had harsh ultimatums and like kennedy had opted for a soft approach and hoped to begin with their points of basic agreements. now, what was the response of the soviet union party? it was skeptical and fearful because they did not want to change the status quo. they fully recognized the changed relations would, in fact, lessen control over the citizens, and that, indeed, is what happened over time. to my knowledge, brunt was the only key player from 1961 still alive in 1989 when the berlin wall fell. when interviewed, he said with great and understandable emotion, what belongs together will now grow together.

he lived to see one of his fondest hopes realized. the jury's still out on how much the two haves of germany grew together in 20 years, but the statement captured the mood of the moment in the first petty days of the open border when germans came together to celebrate the unexpected and almost forgotten hope for unities. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much, professor, and now we turn to livingston, distinguished career of the u.s. foreign service, and here in washington, currently a visiting fellow at the institute where we also sharedded many time together, glad to sit next to you after so many years, and he had been the founding director of the american institute for contemporary hopkins and former president of

the and in the 60s in the foreign service based in west germany in berlin at the time of the construction of the wall and one of thee german hands, and he has a lot to say about the book and about the time, and i'm very pleased to have you here and looking forward to your comments. >> thank you very much. thank you for the -- i'd like to begin with the personal note as mentioned that i was in berlin wall lip in the u.s. mission there, and i was in the same section of vick, and, in fact, i remember some of the editing of my cables that was done, and so even back in those days, he was a real stylist. [laughter] let me just say for a minute, seems to me as we get, one of the main strengths of the book is the counterpoint between the personal and the summit meetings

of kennedy and eisenhower and the meetings in washington, takes ability to show it in every chapter how it looked to a different amounts like himself on the ground. this counterpoint is a great strength of the book. he's drawn from a wide variety of sources, as beth mentioned, and i think probably dick was planning to write the book for 48 years because some of the end notes refer to authors' notes from august 1961. clearly, here he was planning something 48 years ago, and here we have it today. i'm going to skip over points i otherwise would have made, and beth suggested that the book is tightly focusedded, focusedded on the period of 1961-1963, and the core of it is focused on the

time with clay from august 1961 to may in 1962, and one last personal word, the book shows that the loyalty to the former bosses, also more republicans, by the way, henry kissinger, and he has a lot of sections on kissinger's advice to kennedy, most of which was not taken, and then, of course, the core of the book, as i mentioned, is about the gung ho as some referred to him with clay. ..

>> it was a learning process of a practitioner and his willingness at the beginning -- he was unwilling at the beginning to confront the russians and eventually develop confront the russians at the time of the cuban missile crisis. entire pattern of his behavior changed. we forget what he preteens that was. we forget the series of defeats in his first year, and it was

terrible. there was a disastrous summer in july of 1961. then there was the building of the berlin wall. in august of 1961, all of which is important to mention. in the end he got what he really wanted. he wanted the peace treaty and he wanted the flow. which was much more important to the east german economy. which was the most important part of the plot. before i finish with this series of positive remarks, let me suggest four points but i think should have been emphasized more. the first is not forget that in

1961, khrushchev was at the top of his power. there is a large celebratory much like what has been going on in beijing in recent days and so, you know, it's not too difficult to understand why in his meeting at the vienna summit was really convinced that communism would work. today from the perspective of 2009 or even 1989, this seems ridiculous. but to understand why he believed this because he was at the apex of his power in 1961 that should've been stressed one. secondly, this does not sufficiently stretched important of the complex of the influence.

which was all the americans all the time, and some of them did not act strongly. we didn't have any contact and we knew if we were spotted by a reporter, they were often talking to an official and it would be in the papers the next day. and then the election campaign was going on between eisenhower and kennedy's first reaction is he was trying to capitalize on this for election purposes. one should not forget that it was a contest which played into this whole thing. and i think that we need to

mention not sufficiently. lastly, i think they should've mentioned a little bit more strongly that kennedy in 1963, he did not does give one big speech, but he gave his second speech which rewritten or rated his readiness to meet and negotiate with the russians, and see what he talked about in the university as well. and the belligerent speech that he gave as well. in conclusion, one point that i think that we should not forget when we criticize him for negotiating and to accept the division of berlin and germany. all, whether government democrat

or republican, have avoided confronting russia directly on security issues which russia signaled as important. 1953 we did nothing to support the uprising of the east german workers. we did not support this uprising. in 1968 the soviets invaded czechoslovakia and we did not confront the russians. so kennedy was reluctant to confront them. in many ways to be expected with presidential politics over five decades. the second aspect is the mis-assessments and the bad advice given to him by experts.

maybe mr. obama will think about about this because the experts were prepared and they gave him bad advice generally. and it had been so highly rated in the past. kennedy came to rely on his instincts and his brothers. well, that is something to be learned. secondly, it shows the difference in agency that enforces political position. all of those with whom kennedy was dealing with and also someone much older and they were influenced and had served in the first world war and had this is quite understandable.

they are not anxious to get into another war. and in the second world war as well. you know. [laughter] so here it was nothing unusual. he was dealing with a teenager in short pants. but i think that sometimes it's important. maybe most importantly, it shows us his success in berlin. both in 1948 and 1961 and it was based on one very important factor that i think was meant should be stressed much more. that is the courage of the berliners themselves and claim had come to know that in the blockade in 1948. berlin is not conservative. it's in the leftist part of the

city. so this was a leftist city. but it was still very so american. that they counted on the berliners, he made berlin the central aspect a relationship with germany as dick had pointed out. the berliners were our first allies before the west germans a decisive element in the crisis. slice wednesday rush out and buy a big book. go to your bookstore and get it. it's a very good book. >> thank you very much for your stimulating commentary. i would like to give the

audience a chance to respond and ask questions. so many good points made by all of you. these germans played a major role and the refugees were forced to handle these germans and this is not a collective action. people wanted to flee because they wanted to have better rates and their career. and this was also part of this. and it failed thanks to those people who force them basically in east germany for very leftist reasons.

>> don't forget that this is part of a long-term trends. the germans had been moving from east to west ever since 1944, and they are moving today. they're not losing population because they had a dictator there. even for economic reasons. >> mimi doe moved him from ohio to new york. [laughter] >> a few minutes about some of the comments made. >> i wanted to say one thing about the speech. which was i saw as i saw it

kennedy was so darned smart to say the things that he did. because they actually included the word laws that will come down. you know, this is the kind of thing she understood that he could not save her and he made up the procedure as he drove through the city. the kind of speech that we needed. jackie kennedy said that any time -- conservatives always sorry but only a single speech was made by her husband in a foreign language. >> don't go to a bookstore.

>> i have this and i would be happy to sign any coffee that you get. after someone's story. i asked a few people about this and they said, have you got any advice. and the first is the smartest man that we have ever known and he also had a great line. all three of those turned out to be true. i appreciate what everyone has said. and i'm wondering if we could have questions or comments from the audience.

it's so great that you came and listened to all of us. 's. >> thank you. you come here for and i am from the bureau of research and director under kennedy. i think it is terrific as the book. stimulating and rewarding read. but i won't take your time. select your invention, a couple of things as i sat in the foot. was it is for me to see that you could write about the kennedy center without mentioning the dulles family. certainly it was central to winning the background of his kennedy and other senators were there during the late 50s when

dulles was part of this and even the european oriented democrats are actually against dulles for his policies. and then there was alan and then we had the representative affecting the state department. remember at the beginning of the kennedy administration, it was said that tom, i know my sisters are working on this and if you have any part of it, let me know. and she was miss berlin wherever she was. [laughter] >> so she was part of this arrangement.

and so, you know, that is missing. and as soon as the wall went up, eleanor was talking about this with all of the russians gumshoes very direct and personal. anyway, we refer so often the the washington advisers and they are the group of people my impression washington is that there a lot of people are putting a lot of input in a more junior level, perhaps. but when you look at this, as mike feldman, and dick goodwin

and it was quite a rich pool of people there. the same thing is true when dulles was so upset. they continued lecturing them. [laughter] and there were a lot of stories about this situation. my final point is a more serious one. i think it is quite ill go along with you on the kennedy transformation. but i think that kennedy is much more complicated go to the beginning and the end than you indicate. i don't think that you suddenly

influence by berlin. he was a republican of us want to share responsibly for whatever happened. he was very nervous about this. he didn't suddenly decide this was the latest move with the russians. and kennedy had many personalities and he was able to rise to many different occasions, a lot of them are contradictory and make contradictory statements. ultimately it seems that he would've thought the success was because he was very upset about military advice but he stuck it

through four somersaults and he didn't want to press the military man on the spot. which is part of what it stands for. he tied the hands of everyone in the military, both in washington and abroad. it was nothing he didn't authorize from the white house. so i come away pleased that you have reached the analysis that you have, but it is probably overstated when it comes to the final john f. kennedy and whether he really was actually -- you know, whether he was doing this. >> i should perhaps say that you are absolutely right. kennedy was in quickly comforted a person.

i'm not sure that he heard from other white house advisers. it is astonishing and every document seems to be. >> i couldn't deal with people's records that i cannot see. but as for kennedy, a very collocated man, but a very different man from what he had done and 63 to 1964. one can possibly trace this is when does with a series of hills

summoned to a mountaintop. not necessarily a smooth rise or meaning that he had become fond of the military, which i think you're absolutely right. there several times that he would've liked to take this and throw him out the window. but the point was that good things in 1961 and 1962 and also later on as well, and also he did things like sending the brigade out there, which he would not have done earlier. he may have done him because he didn't want to get into trouble and he didn't have any arguments. so they said, let's just are. as you know, they didn't want clay to be there by himself as a

republican. but nonetheless, i see development and kennedy. and whatever it may be, i think this is where trent had made his big mistake. how he had put this on, i found it very interesting. two other questions or comments, please? it was a good intervention. macs are there any more questions? >> can you state your name? >> let me flesh out something that was just alluded to in passing. my impression is that in the context of 1961, the heart of american policy was to treat it as a proxy for the cold war. was this really and was there

any real alternative or weight that had been different or wise and it was more a german problem in the cold war problems. >> this was his view. it is hard to say in retrospect. and i would say that is perhaps impossible to treat it in this way. because the soviet troops were there. what kissinger was suggesting was that we should suggest a technique of negotiation. one of the memos that he signed have lived on through 1990.

we are always coming up with ideas because they would be acceptable to the soviets. he said that if we make acceptability that tests those, you always lose. so he said that we have to explore things and we have to do things that had a positive impact on german and european opinion. he was yours is much concerned about the tactics of negotiations and of how you maneuver through this. i worked for kissinger later on the white house as was mentioned. i felt the same thing. but there was a man who always had a strategic objective. but that all around the strategic objective, there were tactical things a win that win in all directions and they may have been as many as people had accused of making them, done entirely for the domestic labor

reasons or bureaucratic reasons, we just don't know all of that. i have spoken many times with him. but i would be in trouble and if i told you i knew the full range of his mind or purposes. nevertheless it was quite clear he thought that we should not display the soviet card. i would like to say one other thing that was mentioned in the book. after kissinger, one of the most important missions was to be briefed on atomic weapons policy. as you know this may a lot of people nervous. kennedy felt that a offering this was a red flag. but he had to find some way to

assure that. because what he said is that the syrians could convey germany. they would end up at the french border and say thank you very much. and the only way to get rid of it is to bomb west germany with atomic weapons and not obviously was impossible. germany had been largely destroyed. so kennedy sends kissinger in order to brief him on american atomic policy. and they had a meeting that lasted a half hour and that lasted almost two hours. they cancel everything else and postpone everything else. in that meeting, kissinger told kennedy that this is where we're going to start using these

weapons. you can be assured that the soviets would never cross west germany outside of it. and he went through quite a shift in astonishing detail. with such astonishing detail by now so that i want these notes the story. and so did the american embassy. kissinger never reported it, he just told kennedy that he had done it. but that is the kind of thing that he could do. and that's that's the kind of thing that he could do brilliantly because he had stopped this tribe and after that conversation, he understood that he didn't need to worry. >> it's like, okay, we are not going to drop nukes on forever. >> i'm not sure that he said that.

but they were destroyed because they were regarded as so sensitive. there were so many questions about the use of nukes. >> i never asked him what he said. so i don't think that i'm necessarily in favor of this. you know, i think not. [laughter] >> other questions? >> i am michael michael bennet from the air force. he said that khrushchev respected strength. what did he think of eisenhower after the minimal u.s. response to the hungarian uprising and when pleading for help, with the wall have gone up during the eisenhower administration? >> well, one moment, i think we

don't know what he said exactly after that. and i cannot answer that question directly. but i do know that in the context of berlin, that there was this moment when they have been negotiating it a little bit and had turned out nothing useful. so eisenhower decided i would like to get to know this man a little bit better. and he invited him to washington and to camp david. he had been escorted around the country. and then khrushchev met with eisenhower at camp david. essentially he did what he always did, which was to talk in such a backward way that nobody quite knew what he was saying. but they thought might be okay,

but they weren't sure. and you know how it is. the famous moment when everybody was confused about what they should say. because i said i will describe and confuse everyone. [laughter] and that was part of his tactic. and khrushchev was delighted that he had been a part of it. he said now we are somebody. and he said now we are recognized by the greatest power on earth. this is very important for us. and i think it's more than not. one of the things i have learned as i have traveled is how so many countries always think that

the americans or english or french are superior. and that they act superior. people will love it when i would talk to them like a normal human being. it was one of those moments i began to realize that there isn't much of the world a sense that somehow or another, we westerners on a different plane. but nonetheless, this was incredibly important for koester. the unit was a communist society and they were making their way up in the world. they have a lot of missiles. but they needed recognition and new people to say to you or someone. now, i can't tell you in detail what he thought about those

sorts of things. but i didn't read that part of his memoirs very carefully. but that was kind of the way that he reacted. incidentally he gave up on berlin and he didn't push it because of other things. >> any further questions or comments from the audience? >> we have about five more minutes. let me just raise a couple more points. and first is that the readiness of the united states to negotiate behind the germans back. and the reluctance about germany itself johnson's refusal to make

his trip there. and at the right, he felt powerless in the summer of 1961. and so just like he wanted to keep them under control and described as quite well, i think that we want to make sure that we keep our germans under control as well. the second point is very important. because it's an abiding feature. it is the power of the west german economy and caused the czechs in the polls to wish for a peace treaty as early as the 1950s. and i had offered to make a deal with the soviet union and buy out this at the very end.

and the strength of the german economy is more important not only important to these countries, but a booming economy had attracted the labor. not only from east germany, but from all over europe. and this continues. and it does seem to me that this business is willingness to negotiate and this is a part that i hadn't really thought about before. the way the goal was able to exploit that to develop his relationship, which ended in his treaty in 1963. part of it was and they didn't say much. they were actually insistent upon their rights. and so the contrast between the

americans and the french on one side and the british on the other and the british had no problem with showing their identity cards. not at all. but when he went through made a big issue out of it. so there are these ironies. >> kennedy was going to vienna and he said it is the best service you can do for the russians, as well as everyone else. and those were the last words that he heard and it may have influenced him a little bit. and it's nice that fancier because he can tell my editors about this book and i didn't want to do that because i wanted to focus on this period.

i had wanted to write this for a long time. and i did not write it because i felt that i didn't have all the information. it was when i went to the kennedy library when i saw the tapes in the memoirs and i saw the book written by is this remarkable man. when i saw those things when i saw the east german documents, which have become available. i said to myself and now i can tell the full story. i was interested in telling this story not getting into other things. sometimes that his whim, i guess. but the point to me was that i think that kennedy grew during this period. i thought that this could have been the education of john

kennedy. he's a determined and followed 1962 and khrushchev did not know that. that was his big mistake. and we have begun to sound but there were times when kennedy supported him. he said once you have a remarkable conversation and he said this is what you should do. and he said talks talked to the president, don't talk to me. it was beginning to shift away that not all people understood that became clear in october 1962. i think you very much for coming and for your attention. i'm very honored really that you develop the questions to this meeting because this is a very personal memoir for me, as well as a political book and research

book as well. it mixes scholarship and autobiography and it's nice to see that people take it seriously. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you very much. thank you, everyone, for coming. [inaudible conversations] >> on booktv, the investigative journalism team worked together for over four decades writing e-books and it begins at 8:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span2.

>> only the most willful desire to assert that this did not occur as described, or that the regime did not do it. it did happen during the bashar al-assad regime when they did it. i remember secretary hazel and general dempsey. many of you sitting here remember iraq and especially in this especially because we were here for that vote. we voted. so we are especially sensitive, chuck and die, to never again ask any member of congress to take a vote on faulty intelligence. that is why our intelligence community has scrubbed and re-scrub the evidence. we have declassified

unprecedented amounts of information and we asked the american people to judge that information. >> this weekend on c-span, john kerry and chuck hagel from tuesday's senate foreign relations committee on syria, starting saturday at 10:00 a.m. eastern on booktv. and the impact of african american community is at 730. >> coming up, w.e.b. du bois died 50 years ago. the author spent eight years researching and writing the biographies of the civil rights leader. he talked about mr. du bois at the history center. this is about one hour.

>> thank you for making this event possible. it is a great event for me to be in my hometown. i did not really go up here. i spent many years here and my dad was president of a college and my brother was president of stillman college. and if there were another city in which my wife and i chose to live, and i thought i would give the flavor of the biography with the three readings that we have

this evening. can you hear okay? okay. is that better? >> three readings from various sections of the biography chapters 10 and 11 and 14. and they could fall under the headings of the politics of history. that reading will deal with the magisterial study of the reconstruction era and this was published in 1935. in the second rubric might well be called chapter 11, the politics of knowledge. and that will deal with this, one of his greatest social science efforts, the attempt to secure funding from the general

education board of the carnegie corporation to fund the encyclopedia of the negro. a third might well be called politics of the left and it deals with involvement in the waldorf astoria peace conference of 1949. by far the greatest achievement was to be a credible historical narrative in which people filled admirable intelligence, as well as the ignorance inherited through three centuries of bondage. 4 million men and women whose

numbers comprise the majorities of two southern states and the sizable portion of the remainder with what a later generation of historians were gravely call agency it returns to the center of the reconstruction athletic as they steal away to freedom a great many of them, somewhat little some with little book learning, but very quickly voting their own kind into office. the treatment of these first days summons the voices of lyricism to full throttle in the coming of the lord, and the chapter in purple, in a passage that a historian had said that reconstruction was a mistake. it might have ended in here and

give an approximation of the voices in order to avoid the comments. it was all foolish and tawdry comment negros dancing and poverty-stricken ignorance labors, destruction and revolution for the mystery of the free human soul. and the frenzy becomes majestic in uppercase. although his beauty, although his love, all that was truth stood on the top of these mad mornings "dancing with the stars", they treat in the wind and tossed its tears upon the sea. and he offers what he knows has

been to continue to be the dilemma of race in america. of all that most americans want it. this was the least. everything black was hideous and everything he said was wrong and if they offer freedom, they were beast and if they did not fight, they were born slaves. and if they turn on the plantations, they loved slavery and if they ran away, they were wrong. if they felt they were to join. it celebrates a special it taxes into jubilee. there was joy in the south and it rose like a perfume. like a prayer, he lands.

and then stood quivering, slimmed-down girls wild with beautiful hair. all broken mothers, black and gray, raised great voices and shouted is a great song arose in the loveliest thing born on the side of the sea. recapitulating unforgettably. it did not come from africa. where the ancients were it and thrive. it did not come from white america. however the surrounding tones had driven. not the indies or the hot south

with a heavy west that made this music. it has great cadences and wild appeal and it thundered on the world's ears with a message voiced by man. guardians of southern history something the books potential was instantly on the tv. there is a feeling of lightness and the writing and an occasional passage that is provocative and is a mild adjective for black reconstruction and was syndicated to several alerting the region. some critics would insist in an excessive portion of

african-american reconstruction in the strong. but it was an aide to senator of function in the formation of industrial wealth that was the first of several original conceptions of profound impact. the book's opening chapter shows us that black labor became the foundation stone not only of this, but manufacture and communists of the english system of buying and selling things on a worldwide scale. it was the fulcrum of the industrial revolution. it had been the treaty of 1713 that marked a historic moment when the small island one the means to become a global

powerhouse. a significance that was underscored in the text and the tendencies to the suppression of the african slave trade to the united states as a harvard phd. by the terms of the treaty, we imported slaves into the global empire, by which they have the chief supplier of this. it profits from the atlantic slave trade and finance the textile manufacturing of the british maritime bourgeoisie of the african slave trade now

steeped ever more deeply into hallmarks. the authors directly this was to be brought to full term by a west indian admirer and this is classic capitalism and slavery that the profits pouring in to trade in slaves and finnish woods underwrote to a controversial degree great britain's mark will take off. many who saluted this brilliance of the book tended to feel uncomfortable by become suspicious when dealing with this sweet and depth. much of what troubled and alienated the critics now seems less significant six decades after publication to contemporary students of society

who have defined inside in black reconstruction that the former critics were ignored or overlooked. thus there is more than met the eye in the influential american slavery, a prophetic fallacy for conscripts including black men and women and children who toiled under the situation. thomas carlyle's list of them, people cutting each other's throats because one have preferred hiring the slaves for life and the other by the hour was a deadly certainty. it was still imperative to remind historians only four years before the release and it

was a travesty of unique dimensions. once accustomed to poverty with toil and aggregation. once it is hidden beneath a different color of skin and a different statue or a different habit of action and speech and call consciousness disappears. economic situations on the part of the dismal condition of color coding the basement, however. it was as brilliant as one of the early essays written a quarter of a century earlier. and this included democracy and race in america.

even this hardened over decades, masters and slaves and antagonism and it required the millions that excluded poor whites, little more than political passivity and police work. the south was not yet reserved. but with at least 350,000 people with mixed racial heritage in 1850, the majority of them free, the trend toward hybridization showed no sign of slowing. we now know that before this is one a historian maintained this part of relations among the latin american and especially the west indian neighbors.

du bois emphasized that the pointers only begin to appeal across these lines on the basis of color with the onset of the civil war indicating that after all, he was wide and they had eight common object in keeping the white man's. consider the consequences of social democracy consists of the author, so long as the southern white laborers would be induced to prefer poverty with equality with negros, just so long was labor-management made impossible. leftists were deplored with any contention that white workers would endorse compensation by public and psychological rage.

it would serve as an exception and a potent tool of social analysis in a successive wave of dark and different europeans were inducted into a white republican which people of color were excluded by a almost hysterical one drop rule. extrusion of people was inevitable for the victims themselves is a definable logic and blamed. it was used in the contradiction of an entire people being forced into the second-class citizenship in order to justify in policy and law full citizenship. set free without preparation and deserted by the national political party to which they

had rendered such strategic and vital service, these people are uniquely vulnerable to being scapegoated and marginalized. whatever they did in slavery and freedom had to be discounted simply because to do otherwise was to complicate enormously the ideals and politics and economics of laissez-faire. it is one thing that seemed to many is a fabrication of historical license. includes the confederate one machine of slaves. it was depicted as part of having been so benign that the slaves were happy to serve for the fighting south. and the problematic for chapter of the book, therefore, it

becomes a controversial part of the slaves is the second most important factor in the defeat of the south. the phrase itself was a provocation with misconstruction and even division. it evoked images of millions of workers with those acting to paralyze governments. and this includes labor union and the proposition that a letter of black men and women have been decisive enough to affect the course of history as it was theoretically too many of

the socialist persuasion. it was stripped of associations with the general confederation of labor and the trade union of congress who voiced the general strike that amounted to little more than the common sense of self preservation exhibited on a massive scale. as formulated, the general entailed evacuation of the plantation of the slaves and perhaps a half million people and they wanted to stop the economy of the plantation system and to do that, he left the plantation. 145,000 of the 180,000 negro troops were slaves who had either escaped or signed up in the yankees marched through the

neighborhood. what the negro did was to wait and look and listen and try to see where his interests lay. and this was part of the slaves mindset with very similar situations as it became clear that the union armies would or could not return fugitive slaves and that the masters of all of their fury were uncertain of victory. ..

>> what was done in columbia reduces slaves' determination to break away from the plantation system as a crucial component in the north's victory. in looking forward, a chapter brimming with ideas and end with a poem by foster, a dear friend, he deployed the concept of the american assumption to explain the failure of reconstruction. this assumption that wealth was mainly the result of its owner's effort and that any average worker can buy thrift become a capitalist had ceased to be valid after the civil war, he claim, but its tradition lasted down to the day of the great depression at which point he announced, writing in 1935, it had died with a great waveo